In recent years, telecommunication has become an increasingly important part of government and business operations as well as the everyday lives of individual citizens. Telephone networks now offer virtually everyone the ability to talk to each other almost anywhere in the developed world, and the development of public wireless telephone networks (e.g. cellular and PCS networks) have enhanced this communication ability by adding the convenience of almost limitless mobility. The Internet and packet-based data communications now enable rapid communication of a vast array of data, such as e-mail, web-pages and multi-media content; and recently, the wireless networks have extended their capabilities to offer wireless mobility for similar data communication applications.
As the demand for all of these telecommunication services expands, the carriers and other service providers deploy ever larger and more complex networks. To offer a viable service, any such network must be highly reliable and remain available to support service demands virtually all of the time, without substantial failure. Such network operations create a need for technologies to monitor and maintain the elements or nodes that form the fabric of the network infrastructure. To be cost effective, any such technique must be highly automated. A number of operations support technologies exist to meet the network operation demands.
As one example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,301 to Nolting et al. relates to systems and software for processing call detail records (CDRs) derived from parsing either SS7 signaling messages or AMA billing records from elements of a telephone network, and storing the CDRs in databases. A multidimensional database program provides an on-line analytical processing (OLAP) type system, for the user interface and report functions. The OLAP, for example, offers a database query interface with various report capabilities. Reports show the amount of call traffic matching a query and the time of occurrence of certain call events or messages.
Previous methods, similar to that disclosed in the Nolting et al. patent, involve downloading an entire daily log file from a network element and interpreting it offline. Since the files contain 24 hours of messages, for example that go from midnight the previous day, the messages in the file are not current. Even a current file contains messages produced up to the time of download and is not refreshed once it has been downloaded. In addition to issues of currency of the messages, continuous downloading of entire log files creates a burden on the network that increases as the file grows bigger throughout the day.
As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,681,232 to Sistanizadeh et al discloses software for real-time monitoring of network health, in a multi-switch optical Ethernet type packet data network. A service level manager program utilizes agents throughout the network to collect the necessary data regarding network operations. Examples of such agents include: SNMP A gents, RMON Agents, System Agents, Special Agents such as latency measurement agents, Enterprise Agents, Application Agents and Network Agents. The Agents are software managers running in specific network elements, for monitoring and reporting on the utilization and health of the respective network elements. The service level manager program analyzes data collected by the various software Agents, and from this data, the service level manager software creates reports/benchmarks on the health of the network and services.
In a somewhat similar fashion, wireless service providers and other network operators today use the Concord E-Health system to monitor network elements. That commercial system is based on retrieving Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP—an industry-standard) messages from the network elements and translating their contents into diagnostic information. These messages are already in a database-ready form and often only indicate state information. The SNMP messages are obtained by polling of the network element by a central device or as a result of an alarming condition (known as a ‘trap’ in SNMP parlance). Although the polling may be more frequent than a 24-hour download operation, there may still be delays before the polling and capture of the status messages from the network elements.
Another approach commonly used by network operators involves a Telnet terminal communication with a particular network element. Telnet is a terminal-remote host protocol, which allows a person using a personal computer or other terminal device to connect to another computer device and operate as if the terminal were locally hardwire connected to the other computer device, typically for management and operations related functions. In an Internet application, the Telnet protocol allows operations personnel to remotely access a web server or the like. Many telecom equipment vendors include a Telnet capability for remote management access to their equipment, including their switches and routers and the like. Many carriers utilize this capability to allow network operations personnel to remotely connect to an rs232 serial port, or use a network connection and IP address, and log-in to network elements. A network element, such as a base station or switch of a cellular telephone network and/or data nodes of enhanced wireless networks generate messages containing health information, for example regarding status, traffic and alarm conditions. Unless the alarm reaches a level sufficient to trigger an automatic report, the element stores these messages in a log file. When operations personnel log-in via a Telnet connection, the terminal polls the element, and the element downloads the log file containing the latest batch of messages via the Telnet connection to the user's terminal. Once downloaded, the user can review the individual messages, and the messages are available for further processing.
FIG. 12 illustrates such a Telnet procedure in which an operations support system 10 downloads a log file under investigation from a monitored system element 20, such as a base station or switching node of a telecommunication network. The monitored system 20 maintains the log file shown at 21. The communication function 11 of the operations support system 10 initiates the Telnet communication protocol session 23 (over the appropriate connection medium). The user logs in and instructs the monitored system element 20 to download the file 11. In response, the system message stream functionality 25 transfers the log file 21 to the operations support system 10, for example, using a file transfer protocol (FTP) download. The messages from the downloaded file 11 are made available to the user, through a display function 13. The connection 15 to the display function may be local, e.g. to a display on the user's PC or other terminal device serving as the system 10; or the connection 15 may allow remote access through another network connection or the like.
As in the other techniques outlined above, however, the Telnet polling and downloading approach does not provide real-time review of the messages, and the ability to process the messages has been rather limited.